View Full Version : Original prices of the Nikon RF's
Hi folks,
I've found a 1956' price-tag for the Nikon S2 in the Sears-catalogue:
299.50 USD with the Nikkor-H 2/5cm - 349.50 USD with the Nikkor-S 1.4/5cm (Contax IIa was just 50 USD higher, Leica M3 with Summicron was 447 USD at that time)
How were the SP and S3 priced originally?
AFAIK there was a general price decrease in RF cameras towards the end of the 1950's, even with Leica. A Canon P was sold for 249 USD or even less with a 1.8/50 lens. Contrary to that, high quality SLR's kept their level or even increased (Nikon F black with Photomic and f/1.4 lens in 1962: 436.50 USD).
kind regards, Frank
xayraa33
03-18-2007, 03:52
from my copy of the April 1959 Modern Photography mag.
SP w 50/1.4 = $ 415
S3 w 50/1.4 = $ 355
the 50/2 was $ 45 cheaper on each model
mind you this was list price .
A lot money for these days..!
xayraa33
03-18-2007, 04:54
when the avg. factory worker made $60 to $ 75 a week , yes that is a lot of money.
Joe Ehreinreich did not offer too many discount deals to the U.S. Nikon dealers either.
According to a Consumer Price Index calculator at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, $415 in 1959 would be worth $2,902 today. $355 would be worth $2,482.
$299.50 in 1956 would be worth $2,241 today.
The $447 Leica would cost $3,344 in today's dollars.
xayraa33
03-18-2007, 10:43
the B&H S3 2000 kit price today is about equal to the 1959 retail price of the original S3.
our Japanese friends can actually buy a new S3 cheaper at this very moment than an american buyer could in 1959.
I bought a brand new S-2 with a Nikkor f1.4 for $175 in 1958. Henry's, a big photo shop in Los Angeles was closing them out because of the SP and S-3. Wonderful dea!! It and a 35mm, 135mm, and viewfinder, case, etc. was stolen in a house burglary in about 1979. I'd still like to find it. I've since bought an SP and an S-2, both well used. But I certainly remember that orignal black dial S-2 and curse the burglar regularly. Dave
What is interesting is that cameras have not deflated, unlike many other consumer goods.
Probably this is because prices of mechanical cameras are strongly connected to human's work - something most of us like with older cameras - and worker's wages haven't deflated in the good ol' days (in opposite to present). There aren't many ways to produce a thing like a Nikon S3 cheaper nowadays.
Another example: I just got a black Nikon F Photomic FTN, with matching black Nikkor-P 2.5/105mm (the version just before the multicoating) with not a single scratch on them, for laughable 200 USD. Producing such a machine will probably cost at least 4000 USD in present. It needs that high level of trained workers and engineering, that it can be done in Japan, in Germany, maybe in the US, but no way in Mexico or China.
jonmanjiro
03-20-2007, 01:24
It needs that high level of trained workers and engineering, that it can be done in Japan, in Germany, maybe in the US, but no way in Mexico or China.
I cannot comment about Mexico, but can you really say that about China?
Some of the stuff coming out of today's China is very high tech and very high quality! I have no doubt at all China could churn out high quality photographic equipment if they wanted to! But why would they want to? The market it already sown up by several well established players, some of which even have factories in China.
Just wanted to say there is an article in this weeks Amateur Photographer magazine on Nikon RFs. Not read it as yet myself.
>> but no way in Mexico or China.<<
Umm, that sounds a lot like the "made in Japan" mentality of people in the 1950s (those people outside of Japan, anyway).
Some of the stuff coming out of today's China is very high tech and very high quality!
In which kind of "old" (mechanical) technique China is superb? The last products I bought with a "Made in China"-tag were DVD-players, trailer tires, cooking pots, wodden toys and children's books (German written). No hightech.
But I will not buy a Chinese power-saw, or car, or machine tools.
I have a few problems buying Chinese products in a great amount. First, the workers in China aren't free people (compared to German, Japanese, or US workers after WWII). Second, Chinese industry don't respect intellectual property of foreign companies, thus buying their products will probably jeorpardize worker's jobs in my neighborhodd. Third, Chinese industry polutes the environment in a extreme matter, thus jeopardizing the survival of future generations even in the part of the world where I live...
jonmanjiro
03-20-2007, 06:29
In which kind of "old" (mechanical) technique China is superb? The last products I bought with a "Made in China"-tag were DVD-players, trailer tires, cooking pots, wodden toys and children's books (German written). No hightech.
But I will not buy a Chinese power-saw, or car, or machine tools.
I have a few problems buying Chinese products in a great amount. First, the workers in China aren't free people (compared to German, Japanese, or US workers after WWII). Second, Chinese industry don't respect intellectual property of foreign companies, thus buying their products will probably jeorpardize worker's jobs in my neighborhodd. Third, Chinese industry polutes the environment in a extreme matter, thus jeopardizing the survival of future generations even in the part of the world where I live...
Ummm looks we've strayed fairly far off topic ......
I think I'd better refrain from any more comments here and leave the last word with you.
Edited: oops, well ok just one more word!
what's about Guantanamo, Fred?
To be fair, Sonnar2 specifically said "post-World War II"
Leica, of course, has a pretty clean reputation in this area ... Leitz family helped Jewish families emigrate (when the US would not allow refugees to enter because of race-based exclusion quotas) by pretending to hire them, then transferring them to overseas branch offices.
I suppose Soviet cameras also have a dicey moral legacy. However, I've always been intrigued by the very earliest FEDs, the ones made in the '30s by Ukrainian orphans.
mackigator
03-20-2007, 20:07
Please put aside the many other-than-financial reasons to collect things, of which there are many, before reading this post.
nikonhswebmaster's post got me thinking: "What is interesting is that cameras have not deflated, unlike many other consumer goods. Computers have deflated the most of any recent technology. They get cheaper and cheaper, there seems to be no limit."
I've a family member who has talked about his collection of similar older, wonderful cameras as an investment. Certainly they have value, but I'm curious about seeing them as investments - does the group here see the best collectible cameras as investments or as something else?
What is the going value of a mint collectible S2 or S3? In financial terms it is interesting that they have held their value, but more interesting is how that original value x inflation compares with the item's present cost. In antiques and other areas, many collectible items that seem that to be "expensive" at first glance have really just had their prices inflated by the decreasing purchasing power of a dollar ... if I had an S2, would I have made any new, after inflation, money (I'm skipping taxes on sale and storage costs)?
Just curious and in good fun.
mackigator
03-20-2007, 20:54
I'm scanning old family photos at the moment and that's exactly what we all need - a time machine. At least I have the pictures, and they are certainly priceless in my small market!
Ok, I just found an inflation adjusting calculator (it uses the consumer price index - http://www.westegg.com/inflation/) (http://www.westegg.com/inflation/%29). According to it, $400 in 1959 is equal to $2693.79 in 2006, the last year the calc would adjust for. If each mint camera is worth $15,000 (today's dollars), we're still doing pretty well. That is an 8% return compounded over 47 years (http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/present_value_calculator.htm).
Clearly the best purchase would have been to have bought ANY earlly Jasper Johns painting. Buy them for a few thousand, sell them for 25 million each. But if you were greedy and bought them all, they would most likely be unknown and worth nothing, you have to be careful when buying.
Anyone have a time machine?
This behavior to use time machines is universally banned by cosmologic law effective for all species. If ever we found out how a time machine works and make wrong usage of it some kind of alien police will appear to tell. Thanks Stanislaw Lem who found out. :D
Beside, if some person would have had 100 unpacked SP's and stored neatly over the years, then sold them piece by piece, the oversupply will drop prices very soon. Last autumn a S3 w.f/1.4 in excellent condition was sold in a European live auction for 450 EUR +20%.
Market factors -- supply and demaind -- play a factor here. Mint black Nikon SPs are worth $15,000 today because of their fantastic rarity. If you had 100 mint black Nikon SPs, then they would not be so rare. Even if you did not divulge that you are in possession of 100 of these sets, as you gradually sold them, the price would gradually go down. The first buyer at $15,000 would be buying on scarcity. But I'll bet the 100th buyer would be paying less than $4,000.
>>need some workers divert some of the Ukrainians from their forced vacation in Siberia, and call them "orphans."<<
More likely, they were the children of those sent to Siberia.
But teenagers, when enthused, can have an infectious can-do attitude toward things. In the 1930s, it wasn't at all clear that Communism would not work, and they patriotically set out to show the world they could build a Leica for the masses. Once they succeeded, the bureaucrats took over. That kind of stuff happens everywhere, even in New York.
If ever we found out how a time machine works and make wrong usage of it some kind of alien police will appear to tell. Thanks Stanislaw Lem who found out.
Unless the Thursday version of ourselves hits us over the head first, that is. ;)
Philipp
I think there weren't any original black SPs.
The NikonWebmaster has been traveling back through time and has been selling SP-2005s to people back in 1957 in order to create a demand. He has then been reselling them over the decades at great profit. The jig was up last year, however, when the SP-2005 was finally introduced in "real time," thereby undercutting the prices.
xayraa33
03-21-2007, 08:17
what is really rare is the original Canon F1 body in chrome.
How do you create demand by selling something?
jonmanjiro
03-21-2007, 23:41
In which kind of "old" (mechanical) technique China is superb? The last products I bought with a "Made in China"-tag were DVD-players, trailer tires, cooking pots, wodden toys and children's books (German written). No hightech.
How about:
Chinese mechanical inventions that contributed to world societies
A common stereotype is that the Chinese have traditionally lacked scientific and technological ability, despite the four great revolutionary inventions of paper making, printing, gunpowder, and compass that have essentially changed the world. However, Chinese people have made a lot of other significant mechanical inventions besides the famous four, providing the source of many of the prerequisite technologies of modernity. From the 6th to the 15th century, China was the world's most technologically advanced society.
Here are some of the most celebrated mechanical inventions from China that have exerted profound influences towards the development of other societies, especially when they were passed to the West.
Cast iron
The double-acting piston bellows
The crank handle (used for starting an engine)
The gimbals (as in the ancient Chinese Incense Burner)
Manufacture of steel from cast iron
The belt drive (or driving-belt)
Water power
The chain pump
Essentials of the steam engine
The chain drive (in which an endless wheel transmits power from an engine)
The wheelbarrow
Sliding calipers (a kind of compass used for measuring diameters)
The fishing reel
The umbrella
The mechanical clock
"Permanent" lamps
The spinning wheel
Rudder
jonmanjiro
03-22-2007, 00:02
First, the workers in China aren't free people (compared to German, Japanese, or US workers after WWII).
Second, Chinese industry don't respect intellectual property of foreign companies, thus buying their products will probably jeorpardize worker's jobs in my neighborhodd.
Third, Chinese industry polutes the environment in a extreme matter, thus jeopardizing the survival of future generations even in the part of the world where I live...
Regarding 1st point, yes I guess that's true enough, but only after WWII. The Germans or the Japanese cannot claim the moral higher ground before then.
Regarding 2nd point, again true enough, but its not like the Chinese are the only ones not respecting the intellectual property of foreign companies. And at any rate, some of those foreign companies are making a LOT of money out of China, and contributing to those non-free conditions you mentioned.
Regarding 3rd point, yes Chinese factories cause a lot of pollution, but the first world cannot claim the moral higher ground here, because first world countries had already caused lots of environmental pollution before China industrialised, and still continue to do so at a per-capita-rate far greater than China's.
Since we're way off topic, perhaps we should end this discussion in this thread. I'm happy to continue by email or PM if you'd like to continue the discussion further.
Regards, Jon
If Nikon RF prices today are the same as they were in 1990, then they're actually cheaper today because of inflation.
Something that cost $1,000 in 1990 would cost $1,550 today.
Something that cost $640 in 1990 would cost $1,000 today.
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
So if we were paying $1,000 for a camera then, and are paying $1,000 for the same camera now, the relative purchase value of the dollar has changed, and the camera is cheaper.
This is a good argument for using instead of collecting.
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